Naruse's most popular film in Japan, based on a Fumiko Hayashi novel, Floating Clouds is a tragic study of a woman's degradation for the love of a worthless man amid the chaos of postwar Tokyo. Yukiko (Hideko Takamine) attempts and fails to lure her wartime lover Kengo (Masayuki Mori) away from his wife. Left to fend for herself, she becomes increasingly lost in her memories of Indochina, where he was a soldier and she a nurse; meanwhile, Kengo sets about in relentless pursuit of his own interests. Yukiko is like Tokyo's postwar homeless, who stand about the streets while a frantic westernization takes place all around them. Indeed, Joan Mellon, in The Waves at Genji's Door, suggests that in this film Naruse links the Japanese male with the exploiting Americans. Still, with its heroine who, Camille-like, throws her life away for love, Floating Clouds is less-than-typical Naruse.